Thursday, January 12, 2006

Conway's Game of Life

I heard of it long ago but just got reminded of it today watching the Nature of Things (strange name for a show when you think about it). Today I did myself the favour of downloading it. And damn! It is as beautiful as I hoped. You can download it here. On the left are a few of the shapes I found worthwhile playing with.

Yes, I embrace my geekdom. For those not familiar with the game.. the green dots, 'critters', either live or die depending on how many neighbours it has. Most of these are stable populations except for the U, this is the start of a prolific colony, and the R near the middle. This one glides across the screen. I spent a few hours shooting them into stable colonies. Fun stuff.

As I was playing it, it was hard not to get philosophical about the whole thing. Raging against the fatalism of it all. Wondering if there were possible unstable though perpetual colonies. Or you can just shoot gliders into stable colonies.